Students protest phone pouch purchase
TORRINGTON — Students who violated the Torrington High School code of conduct when protesting the district’s new cellphone policy this week will be disciplined, school officials said.
After hours of debate during Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting, the board approved $32,000 to buy secured pouches to keep phones locked up during the school day. The decision led some students to walk out of school in protest Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
Fire alarms were pulled Thursday morning at Torrington High School, prompting officials to cancel classes for the rest of the day and send students home early. Police responded to the school but no arrests were reported, according to the AP.
Torrington schools were closed Friday due to snow.
The school district has a policy that prohibits cellphones in class, but rarely is it enforced, members of the school board said during Wednesday’s meeting.
“We’ve been talking about this for years,” board Chairwoman Fiona Cappabianca said. “Now that we’ve made a decision, people are objecting, but this has been discussed for a long time.”
The school board on Wednesday invited Benji Spanier from Yondr, a company that makes pouches with magnetic locks, to explain how they are used in schools and why they are a benefit to students. Spanier said the pouches keep phones out of students’ reach until the end of the school day.
Each student is given their own pouch for the year and must bring it to school each day with their phone, locking the pouch as they enter the building and unlocking it when they leave. THS will be able to do compliance checks during the day to make sure students haven’t brought another phone into the building with them, Spanier said. If a student has to leave early or arrives late, a procedure will have to be in place to handle individual phone pouches, probably by the administration.
Student council members, class officers and several parents opposed to the plan told the board they use their phones for schoolwork, to keep in touch with their parents in case of emergencies and, in some cases, use apps to monitor health concerns such as asthma and anxiety. The sophomore class presented a petition to the board during the meeting.
“I’m a high achieving student, and I can honestly tell you that using my phone is part of my success,” said Ashley Petzel. “So many apps are helping me. When I’m working in the lab, I can’t pick up my laptop and take pictures of the slides I’m working on ... I used a breathing app when I get stressed out. A lot of students do.”
The school district itself is also incorporating cellular phones into some of its procedures — a fact not every school board member was aware of.
School board member Ed Corey pointed out that posters with a scannable QR code were recently hung on the walls of the high school building and students were told to scan them to make an appointment with their guidance counselor.
“There are lots of ways cellphones integrate how teachers and students do their work,” he said. “They integrate with how everyone conducts business. It’s looking us in the face.”
School board member Jess Richardson questioned those points during Wednesday’s meeting, and asked if the vote should be delayed.
“How are phones being used by teachers? We’ve heard from students that their teachers are having them taking a photo of their class assignments; so what opportunities are students losing, by losing their phones?” she asked. “We need to know the pros and cons of this. Some of our speakers brought up salient points.”
In his presentation to the board, Spanier said “unrestricted use of phones interferes with educational mission of the school, lowers pupil performance, promotes cyberbullying and contributes to an increase in teenage anxiety, depression and suicide.”
He also said cellphones have dangerous consequences in the event of a school shooting or other emergency. He brought up the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida and said students were filming the activity while they were in the building and posting their videos online.
“That’s a distraction,” he said. “Those videos can attract untrained adults to the scene of the crisis. Posting the scene on social media can alert the perpetrator or others to the location.”